Trucks, socks and even soft drink cans are being pressed into service by Zimbabwean gold smugglers desperate to avoid trading their treasure for worthless currency at rock-bottom rates. One man’s favourite method involves putting his gold dust into an opened Coke can.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>Birgit Kidd is having lunch with her torturer. The 60-year-old still bears scars from the attack by agents of the Central Intelligence Organisation, the feared Zimbabwean security police, last year. Despite a dislocated shoulder, cuts requiring 16 stitches, and severe bruising to her knee, the diminutive blonde activist has not been cowed into submission.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>"It was 4am on Tuesday and opposition candidate Iain Kay was driving to his hometown near Harare. Two rallies had been planned. But by the time the sun had set, the police had detained more than two hundred people and Kay had returned to the interrogation centre where he had been tortured last year. The MDC still faces violence and intimidation, but, for now at least, it refuses to stay silent.